Vance laments that school shootings are a ‘fact of life’ in the US as he calls for more security

(CNN) — Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance on Thursday lamented that school shootings in the US have become “a fact of life” and called for greater security at schools in the wake of the shooting in Winder, Georgia, that left four people dead earlier this week.

“I don’t like this. I don’t like to admit this. I don’t like that this is a fact of life. But if you’re, if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets, and we have got to bolster security at our schools,” Vance said at a campaign event in Phoenix in response to a question from CNN on what specific policies he supports to end school shootings.

As the audience applauded, Vance continued, “We’ve got to bolster security, so that if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they’re not able to. And again, as a parent, do I want my kids’ school to have additional security? No, of course, I don’t. I don’t want my kids to go to school in a place where they feel like you’ve got to have additional security. But that is increasingly the reality that we live in.”

As part of his remarks, Vance also said that strict gun laws are not the determining factor in preventing school shootings.

“The Kamala Harris answer to this is to take law-abiding American citizens’ guns away from them. That is what Kamala Harris wants to do,” Vance said.

“You’ve got some states with very strict gun laws, and you’ve got some states, they don’t have strict gun laws at all. And the states with strict gun laws, they have a lot of school shootings,” he said at another point. “And the states without strict gun laws, some of them have school shootings, too. So clearly, strict gun laws is not the thing that is going to solve this problem.”

Vance also urged the audience to pray for the victims, families and community of Winder.

“No parent should have to deal with this. No child should have to deal with this. And yes, after holding these folks up in prayer and giving them our sympathies — because that’s what people deserve in a time of tragedy — then we have to think about how to make this less common.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, criticized Vance’s remarks in a post on X.

“School shootings are not just a fact of life. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can take action to protect our children—and we will,” Harris said.

Vance, defending what he said in Phoenix, posted on X, “Kamala wants to take security out of our schools instead of protecting our children. Instead of addressing her own failures, she lies about what I said. More desperation from the biggest fraud in American politics.”

The Democratic National Committee also slammed Vance in a statement. “Let’s be clear: no matter what Donald Trump and JD Vance say, tragedies like this do not need to be a ‘fact of life,’ and we don’t just have to ‘get over it’ when Americans, including young children, are violently murdered.”

In Georgia, 14-year-old Colt Gray has been charged with four counts of felony murder after investigators say he fired an AR-style rifle on campus on Wednesday morning. His father, Colin Gray, also has been charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. Two law enforcement sources with direct knowledge of the investigation said Gray told authorities he purchased the AR-style rifle used in the shooting as a holiday present for his son in December 2023.

This article has been updated with additional reporting.

CNN’s Shania Shelton contributed to this report.

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